Michael Pietrusewsky & Michele Toomay Douglas. The human skeletal remains: Ban Chiang, a prehistoric village site in northeast Thailand.

Higham, Charles

(Vol. 1; University Museum Monograph 111). xx+495 pages, 115 figures, 81 tables, CD-ROM. 2002. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology; 0-924171-92-8 hardback $100.

This is the first volume of the Thai Archaeology Monograph Series, issued by the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, with Dr Joyce White as series editor. This institution began collaborative fieldwork in 1968 at the site of Chansen, and continued with the excavation at Ban Chiang in 1974-5. The Thailand Archaeometallurgy Project concentrated on copper extraction and processing sites, beginning in the late 1980s. The series promises to be an important and welcome addition to the literature on South-east Asia. When Ban Chiang came to public attention 30 years ago, it rode a frothy wave of publicity. Early thermoluminescence dates suggested phenomenally early contexts for the bronze-bearing layers. This came to the attention of Dr F. Rainey, Director of the University Museum. Sensing another Tikal or Ur, he appointed Chester Gorman to his staff, in order to secure American participation in the 1974-5 excavations. Specialists came to the site as part of a training programme. Their number included Dr Pietrusewsky and your reviewer. Ban Chiang was then being looted to extinction because of the saleability of Iron Age mortuary vessels bearing red painted designs. The Thai Fine Arts Department appointed Dr Pisit Chamenwongsa to co-direct excavations before it was too late to save any intact material.

Two seasons ensued, one in the garden of a resident who had refused to let looters onto his property, the second in a narrow lane near the centre of the mound. Both excavations were hemmed in by surrounding properties, the latter covering 57[m.sup.2]. The stratigraphy was nor deep as such sites go, reaching about 3m in places. However, it revealed occupation and mortuary remains covering the Neolithic period, through the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age. Following Gorman's death, only seven years alter the excavation was completed, the authorities at Pennsylvania appointed Joyce White, a graduate student, to take charge of the analysis and publication.

The present volume covers the human skeletal remains. It presents a detailed and vital description of the complete assemblage in eight chapters, and then considers their findings in a regional and East Asian perspective. Several appendices provide measurements and a resume of individual burials. We learn of the age and sex distribution of the 141 burials uncovered, the palaeodemography, and the skull and dental morphology and palaeopathology. One chapter describes the health of the people, covering causes of death and the imprint of disease as expressed in bone formation. The population was, according to the demographic profile, either static or gradually decreasing. This seems a little unexpected, given the longevity of the prehistoric occupation. One of the most illuminating chapters, for the non specialist, relates to the activities of the prehistoric people as reflected in pathologies. They evidently led a vigorous life, consistent with the activities one sees in the area today. This includes agricultural pursuits, fishing, wading through muddy soil and carrying heavy weights. Some women experienced crises at childbirth, one being interred with foetal remains in situ. There is no evidence for injury through conflict. In general, the evidence suggests a healthy lifestyle and robust skeletal development. There is only limited evidence for iron deficiency anaemia, a condition that afflicted the population at the contemporary coastal site of Khok Phanom Di. The quality and detail provided by the two authors deserve high praise, and the monograph follows Dr Nancy Tayles' comprehensive analysis of the human remains from Khok Phanom Di as a further milestone in the genre (Tayles 1999).

However, the authors have had to grapple with the fact that no detailed description of the excavation has been published. Its location, stratigraphy, chronology, material culture and full cultural context relative to South-east Asia as a whole are thus not available. We have no plans of the layout or sequence of the burials. For those familiar with previous claims for deep antiquity, it might thus come as a surprise to read, in the introduction, the aside that the site was first occupied in the vicinity of 2100BC, citing a personal communication from Dr White. Again, in her preface, Dr White asserts that there is no generally accepted definition of the Neolithic, Bronze or Iron Ages in South-east Asia. The reader is therefore confronted with ten cultural phases, divided into three periods with no means of referencing them against sequences at other sites. Moreover, rather than providing some form of alternative to the Three Age nomenclature, the authors continue to employ it but using lower case.

The reader needs, therefore, fully to appreciate that the principal empirical chapters are describing a sample drawn from two different parts of the site, covering a period in excess of 2000 years. Whether it is legitimate to infer general statements on demography, health, stature, and biological relationships on the basis of such a pooled sample is open to question. This becomes acute when they place the Ban Chiang sample in its wider context, a procedure that applies their findings to the proposed expansion of rice cultivators into South-east Asia, and the relationship between the people of Ban Chiang and those of other sites.

Thus the authors devote much space to comparing their data with that from Khok Phanom Di, the only comparable assemblage that has received the same detailed treatment as their own. The latter excavation incorporated one part of the site rather than two, and covered five rather than 27 centuries. Moreover, Dr Tayles was able to order her analysis on a minute series of cultural and environmental changes already set out in the preceding four volumes of the site report. The importance of considering human skeletal assemblages in a precise temporal context is well illustrated when the authors turn to the palaeodemography of the Khok Phanom Di sample. They note that it has a 'remarkably high percentage of subadults (61.0 per cent), nearly double that of other samples from Thailand (p. 241). They fail to appreciate the extremely fine stratigraphic sequence at this site, and its tight chronological framework. In fact, the high rate of infant mortality was confined to the first four of seven mortuary phases and, thereafter, it fell markedly. The reasons for this reduction in infant deaths are, we think, multivariate, and emphasise the misleading inferences that can be generated by lumping together skeletons that derive from a long period of occupation.

This is compounded when the authors turn, in their last two chapters, to consider cultural implications of their data. Unable to base their review on issues generated in a full site report, they turned to hypotheses I and others have proposed. One of these has identified, on the basis of linguistic and archaeological evidence, a possible expansion of rice farmers into Southeast Asia and eastern India, that originated in the Middle Yangzi Valley. The initial occupation of Ban Chiang has been cited as one instance of this process. This, the authors assert, is a simplistic view involving the replacement of the aboriginal population. When exploring alternatives, the authors compare the metrical characteristics of the Ban Chiang crania with sacrificial victims from the Shang capital at Anyang, and the Jomon hunter gatherers of Japan. The authors note similarities between the people of Ban Chiang and the latter group and the Ainu people, and pay no heed to the weight of linguistic or archaeological evidence that, in fact, supports the hypothesis for demic diffusion. The relevant people for comparative purposes are surely the early farming people of Yunnan, Lingnan and the Yangzi Valley. A second of these hypotheses identified a marked cultural change at the site of Ban Na Di, only 23km south of Ban Chiang, with the onset of the Iron Age, which my colleagues and I have ascribed to a new population. It was based on a detailed study of the ceramics, a new range of material culture, and a change in mortuary behaviour, all variables not yet available in published form for Ban Chiang.

Such broad-ranging and fascinating issues will continue to be debated and refined as research continues. At this juncture, it is timely to welcome this handsome volume to the shelves of all those with an interest in South-east Asia in particular, and the study of human remains in general. There can be no doubt that, despite the vexing problems they faced with structural problems in the series, Pietrusewsky and Toomey Douglas must be congratulated for producing a volume of outstanding worth and scholarly merit.

Reference

TAYLES, N.G. 1999. The people (The excavation of Khok Phanom Di, a prehistoric site in central Thailand Vol. V). London: Society of Antiquaries of London.

CHARLES HIGHAM

Dept. of Anthropology, University of Otago,

Dunedin, New Zealand.